Recently, I bought Michel Thomas' French Language Builder, (UK, US) which is a novel way of enchancing your French. It is an Audio CD book and takes a slightly different approach to normal rote learning. He starts to explain quite complex sentences from the start of the CD. Explaining the constructs used in the real spoken French, rather than starting with small simple sentences. It enables you to quickly speak and understand real French
When combined with an iPod or similar it is a very immersive way to learn French, even if you do end up on the train mumbling away to yourself. They are an enjoyable and effective way of learning a language.
He also has full language courses, which is currently 40% discounted on Amazon. There are courses in French (UK, US); Spanish (UK, US); Italian (UK, US); and German (UK, US).
I'd recommend them quite strongly if you are planning on strengthening your lanuguage skills, maybe prior to a skiing trip.
cultural differences: December 2003 Archives
Over the past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the most depressing way to spend what is jokingly called, your lunch-hour, is not eating it at your desk, which is in itself quite devoid of happiness, but in fact being tempted, due to pressure of work, to eat your lunch on the way back from the shop.
Lunch becomes a joyless, mechanical task of getting enough calories to satisfy your hunger, far removed from the ideal of a true lunch hour. Nothing like this would be recognisable in most of France, Italy or Spain, where food is valued as much as work.
